


Nakama

by Whreflections



Series: Hanniholidays Prompts 2017 [4]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Animal Death, Animal Transformation, Gen, HanniHolidays Prompt Calendar, Implied/Referenced Cannibalism, Mage Will Graham, Magic, Parallel Universes, People Being Eaten (Not By Humans), but only referenced
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 07:04:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13094916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whreflections/pseuds/Whreflections
Summary: For HanniHolidays Prompt Calendar Day 4- Snowed InFantasy AU...ish.  Hannibal Lecter is eight, and watching his sister die slowly from fever and starvation.  At least, he'll be watching her die slowly if he nothing more horrible happens to her first.In a lot of worlds, he doesn't get the option of seeing that slow death.In this one, he isn't going to watch her die at all.  Not if Will Graham has anything to say about it.





	Nakama

The bird skin makes a strange, wet slap as it hits the floor.  Hannibal is reminded of the sound of cook spanking the stable boys he caught stealing from the pantry, though he knows even at the thought that it isn’t the same.  It isn’t the same at all, it’s new, and his mind is searching for a place to put it, like it searches still for a home for the crunch of bone, the separation of muscle from skin.  He had not expected to ever know what his mother’s body sounded like reduced to such components—does the knowledge go in the room with the sound of her voice, and the touch of her hands when he was frightened, or does it go elsewhere? 

A root cellar in his mind, perhaps, a place where he stores the memories he needs to keep cold.  A place to preserve, to prevent them growing rancid with age as much as to keep them contained.  Sealed away in the dark, far enough from the core of his mind that they won’t assault him unless he seeks them out.

If he builds such a place, the sound of the bird skin would go there, too, because his muscles twitch when he hears it, hands clenching to tuck Mischa’s face in further against his neck.  Her cheeks burn with fever.  It’s so cold on the balcony that for a moment he’s almost grateful for the heat, and promptly loathes that he considered it. 

Below, a bowl clatters to the floor alongside the skin, the hollow sound of wood skipping across the boards.

“We have to eat.  Eat, or die,” The man with the now empty hands says, in guttural German.  Thick, and rough.  None of the veneer of gentility the first Nazis had had, none of the warmth his tutor had carried.  He had liked German, when they learned it together. 

Now, he hears the echoes of the little deer’s skull butting against the tub, and his fingers tighten in Mischa’s hair enough that she whines, just a little.  He can’t bring himself to shush her.  She’s been far too quiet these last two days.  Too still. 

On the floor, the men are looking up at them, wildness in their eyes.  If they come, he has nothing to fight with but the chain around his neck and the ferocity in his hands.  It will not be enough. 

The man with the eyes the color of the sky cast in the sharp clarity of winter jerks his hand toward the door, impatient.  “Go on, then.  Get the axe.  We’ll do it here so we don’t spill a drop.” 

Hannibal’s heart is pounding, a wild race.  He wonders, absently, why he can never feel his heart at ordinary moments.  He wonders, too, if this is true for everyone, or if there is something wrong with him that he can find proof of such an integral part of himself only when what it holds most dear is at risk.   

Hannibal presses his lips to the top of Mischa’s head, as long and lingering as he dares  Her scalp feels hot, her hair too thin.  Thin, and still baby-soft.  Hannibal’s lungs pull tight, like the drawing of purse strings to prevent a spill.  For a moment, he can’t take any more air in no matter how hard he tries. 

The howl jolts him out of it, air bursting out with no semblance of the order of a proper sigh, gasping back in, carrying her name in its wake.  The answering howl is loud, so full of force and warbling melody the bearer has to be right outside the windows downstairs.  As they were, before, when they ate.  It’s strange, absently, that they took their meal in silence then, but are so vocal now—

Strange, until he hears the man who held the bowl, the man who had gone for the axe. 

There is nothing too alien about his cries.  They were far from the battlefields, largely, but there is familiarity in the panic of the dying.  He has heard it, before—in a red squirrel caught in the talons, the little wounded deer dragged struggling into the cabin. 

By the fire, the man who carries the winter in his eyes curses.  “Fucking _God_ , the fucking bastard can’t even—are you cocksuckers deaf?” 

No one is deaf, but no one is going, until they scuffle and jostle and trip over themselves in an effort to look as if they’re hurrying.  One carries a chair, another a gun.  Three of them force their way out the door almost as one; the fourth lingers until a sound carries over the wind like the cracking of a branch, and the one who is always yelling, always pushing, pushes the straggler out into the snow. 

With the door shut, he paces and paces, out of tempo with Hannibal’s heart, his shadow from the fire stretching so long across the room it curves up the wall, as ever reaching as the man himself. 

Outside, the gun fires four times.  The screams are everywhere, beneath the window, behind the house.  It’s a whirlwind of sound muffled by wooden walls and swirling snow, and Hannibal covers one of Mischa’s ears with his palm when she whines loud enough that it takes the shape of his name.  The other he presses against his chest, against his heartbeat that is slowing even now. 

If this is a dream, he can do nothing about it until he wakes but hold her close.  If it isn’t, their captors are down to a single man.  He is eight, and weak from hunger, but if her life depends on it, he can kill a single man.  His hands are sure of it.  His heart is disengaged, bent on the single task of playing lullaby for the one who owns it. 

His head reminds him that if he kills him before the chain is unfastened, they will die here still.  It probably matters little, practically.  They’re probably going to die here regardless. 

The door bangs open, less the force of the wind than force of the man who stands in the middle of the open frame.  Hannibal has never seen anything like him, but it comes to his mind that he has seen drawings of similar men, once, in leatherbound books older than his grandfather. 

This man is bare chested, but if the cold troubles him at all Hannibal can see no sign of it.  The wolf skin he wears on his back is held in place by the wrap of the forelegs around his neck and across his chest, giving the odd impression of an embrace.  It does not make him any less forbidding.  The wolf's head is thrown back, revealing dark curls and a gaze so intense he could be named nothing but a predator- or something worse.  The quiet turn of Hannibal's stomach warns him that perhaps the wolf would have been easier to handle; the wants of a wolf are simple, as the men in the cabin had been simple.  Vicious, but simple.  A wolf, similarly, follows its nature.  They had not eaten his mother out of malice, after all.  They had not killed her, and would not have.  She wasn't weak, or old, not theirs to claim until an accident had made her so, but this man...

He has thrown off the wolf, and what does that make him?

Complex, and other.  An unknown. 

Hannibal shifts Mischa against him, shuffling her to let her nestle against his side, her hot little forehead against his neck, his body between her and the stairs. 

“The _fuck_ —“ The man near the fire begins, but he gets no chance to finish.  The wild creature from out of the storm vaults onto the table, over it, bearing their captor down to the floor beneath him.  There is a fluid grace to him Hannibal has never seen, not in the swans, not even in Cesar out in the pasture at a full out run. 

Hannibal is entranced, mouth open for a half a second though it snaps shut when those dark, wild eyes rise to meet his. 

Beneath him, struggling blue eyes seems a pitiful figure, so ineffective  against the lashing of his limbs the newcomer is unmoved.  His focus on Hannibal is absolute, and—

Unusual.  Warm, even at a distance.  As warm as the fire. 

“Close your eyes, Hannibal,” he asks, or tells.  Tells, it seems, because though he would have said no, Hannibal’s eyes are heavy and he finds himself sinking to the landing, Mischa clutched closer against his chest the further he slips. 

\-----

When Hannibal wakes, the chain is gone.  For half a heartbeat he thinks Mischa is, too, but he feels her little legs next to him, and flails only a little until he can put his hand on her chest and feel it rise and fall.  Her eyelashes flutter as she sleeps.  Her cheeks are flushed with fever, but she is breathing, and not coughing, and he is so grateful for both that the sound of a voice to jar him out of his relief nearly startles him off the blanket they’re both resting on.

“She’ll need to drink this, when she wakes.” 

The man from the storm is at the table, his hand resting briefly on the top of a kettle.  It’s large, the smell coming from it strangely spiced.  If not for the strength of the scent and the unchanged appearance of the man before him, Hannibal would have been sure the night before (was it?  has he slept that long?) was all a dream.  Dreams are inconsistent, his tutor had said, but there is too much concrete, here. 

The wolfskin cloak is the same; the untamed curl of his hair.  His eyes, deep and dark in the shadows near the fear, flickering with a heat that stretches past all understanding when he looks at Hannibal again. 

From his perch on the edge of the table, the man holds out his hand.  “It’s alright, Hannibal.  Don’t be afraid.” 

“I’m not,” he says, with more annoyance than he would have realized he felt.  “I’m eight.  I can take care of my sister, and I’ve seen worse than you.”  He isn’t at all sure of it, not yet, but the man must be, because his smile widens, and there is no menace in it.  Only faded corners, like his mother’s when he wanted to talk about the castle pond after the Nazis came, about the odds they might have left the swans be. 

“I know you aren’t afraid, and you’ve looked after her well.  So, come to me.”  His fingers unfurl completely, as if they alone will bridge the distance. 

Hannibal does, but his hands stay in his pockets.  “Mischa needs a doctor.” 

The man’s head tilts, not quite a concession.  “She needs _help_.  A doctor could help her.  So have you, and so can I.  I’ll take care of the parts you can’t; you just make sure she drinks the tea.” 

“And why would you?  Why—“  Hannibal’s eyes flick to the floor before the fire, an empty expanse.  The bird skin is gone.  Blue eyes is gone.  There isn’t even any blood, and he knows, he _knows_ there should have been.  There’s no blood on the man’s hands, either.  “Why _did_ you?” 

The fire crackles, the brightest tips of its light catching in the stranger’s eyes as he leans forward, elbows on his knees.  “Because in another world, you were my friend.  We changed each other completely.  You gave me a great gift.” 

Hannibal is curious, so desperately curious he can feel the sweep of it down to his toes.  Beyond Mischa, and his tutor, and cook, and his mother…he’s never had friends.  Not friends that sought him out, not like this.  Before he knows it, he’s close enough to sit on the bench where the man’s boots rest, less than a handbreadth away.  “What was the gift?” 

Carefully, so carefully his hand almost freezes twice, he reaches out to shift the strands of Hannibal’s hair.  His scalp is sore, there, and he knows the man is feeling blood, a remnant of their capture.  It’s hardly hurt badly enough for him to notice, and it certainly isn’t enough to pull away from, now—not when the hand that so easily pinned their captor feels so deceptively gentle. 

“You gave me the gift of seeing what I could become.  I came here to do the same for you.  The gift of opportunity.  The world will be open before you in a way it wasn’t before.  You can become anyone.” 

“Not anyone.  I’ll be myself, just…different.”

His laughter as he nods and lets his hand drop is soft, and still startling.  In his smile, his teeth flash white in the firelight.  It’s too quick to see fangs, but Hannibal wonders if he has them all the same. 

His shoulders are rounded, and Hannibal wonders what he carries—wonders, too, about the version of himself he’ll now never see, about the oddity of this man and these last hours and the possibility he, too, might be dying of fever. 

Hannibal glances at Mischa, and straightens his back.  “Mischa has to eat.”

“And so do you.  I’m going to cook rabbit; I hunted while you slept.” 

“She’s sick; I—“

“You’ll both eat,” he says, in the tone of a parent who will not argue.  “There’s enough for everyone.  I’ll hunt again tomorrow, a larger meal to celebrate the solstice.”

“You’re staying?”

He pushes off from the table, and gets to his feet.  Now, Hannibal can see the rabbits hanging from the wall behind him.  Four, and large.  They hang by the hind feet.  There is no blood on them, either. 

“Just until you’re safe.”

“But you said—“  his tongue catches, unsure of himself now that the man’s turned to look back at him.  Patient, the way some adults can be—or waiting, as if this protest were expected.  Hannibal’s arms cross over his chest, his chin tilting up.  Whoever this man knew, they aren’t the same.  “He _was_ your friend.  That means I—he isn’t now.” 

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“But you came here to be _my_ friend.  We aren’t friends if you leave me.”

His laughter, this time, is bitter, full of too many unknowns.  For the first time since he came closer after waking, Hannibal is, for a half a second, almost frightened of him, but it passes. 

He sighs, and takes down the rabbits, and it passes. 

“Do you know any magic, Hannibal?”

“There is no magic.  There’s science, and math.  My tutor always said—“

“There’s always magic.  The people in your world may not know how to use it, but there’s always magic.”  He lays the rabbits out on the table, longwise, as if they’re running.  This time, when he holds his hand out to Hannibal, Hannibal takes it.  It’s warm, his grip careful.  “I’m Will Graham.  And I won’t leave you.  Not this time.” 

 


End file.
